Herakut

For four remarkably productive years, the graffiti loving and street art affiliated “storytellers,” Hera and Akut, have combined their artistic skills and individual specialties in order to create one odd but always exquisitely beautiful, instantly recognizable style: Herakut.
It’s an extremely contradictory mix of ingredients — Akut’s autodidactic but top-level photorealism and Hera’s classically educated though Don’t-Give-A-Shit-roughness — that results in a surprisingly well-balanced fusion of respect for each other’s qualities and the shared urge to capture life’s anecdotes with brush and spray can.
For the first time this book explores the interpersonal and creative processes behind the duo’s murals and canvas paintings, which have attracted the attention of the international art scene.

About the Artists

Hera & Akut

Hera, Jasmin Siddiqui, born 1981 in Frankfurt, Germany. Studied Visual Communication/Graphic Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden. Started graffiti in 2000.

Akut, Falk Lehmann, born 1977 in Schmalkalden, Germany. Studied Visual Communication/Graphic Design at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Started graffiti in 1991.

“The German artists Hera and Akut, both with roots in the graffiti scene, joined forces in 2004 and began creating collaborative work under the name of Herakut. The duo has shown around the world, including in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, and Bristol. They have published two books, The Perfect Merge published in 2009 and 2011’s After the Laughter, to great success. … Herakut’s paintings are sensuous, savage, and always remarkable for their powerful dualism. Akut’s photorealistic details play out against Hera’s expressive, more gestural, line-work in canvases that seem poised to articulate stories of triumph and hardship. Humor and text are weaved their way into the work effortlessly. …”

Jennifer Goff on Herakut; press release excerpt from “Don´t Look At Me” solo show at Shooting Gallery, San Francisco, November 2013